Gushes & rants about the things in our heads

Say No More by Liliana Hart

Dante Malcolm is a man of refined tastes. He was once a part of Britain's Elite Intelligence Force, but there was a reason he'd never been able to capture Simon Locke, the notorious thief who always seemed to be one step ahead. That's because Dante and Simon were one and the same, until Dante's double life eventually caught up with him and now he belongs to the Gravediggers. Eva Rothschild is a Detective Inspector with Interpol and is the one responsible for catching MI-6's most notorious agent in his final heist--except the heist killed him. But something has never felt right about his death, and it's haunted her for months. It was too easy, and Dante Malcolm was too smart to go down that way. Dante might belong to the Gravediggers in body, but his heart and soul will always belong to the next job. The rest of the team doesn't know about his alter ego because he made sure the information went missing from his file. So when the job he's always waited for seems like a possibility, he sneaks out of the country like a thief in the night, only to run into the only woman who's ever been able to match him in wit--and passion--for the job. Except they're standing on opposite sides of the law--and only one of them can walk away with the prize.

’Say No More’ had loads to deliver after I read its blurb.

Slap an arrogant, self-absorbed man who only lives for only himself and his pleasures without any consideration for others on the table and I’m going to want a redemption story and a hard but rewarding way out of the morass he’d found himself in. Put a woman whom he’d wronged so badly that I expect grovelling and a hard time by the end of it.

Instead, all I got was more cocky smugness, inflated self-confidence and the constant pompous justification of why he acts the way he does, amid the backdrop of child-smuggling and a missing twin that could have been more prominent but wasn’t. The action and the suspense somehow took a backseat to the meandering story of Dante’s womanising habits, his history with Liv and the Gravediggers mission that stood in the way of the plot moving forward.

Of all the books in the Gravediggers series, ‘Say No More’ is unfortunately the weakest of the lot in terms of plot and characterisation. It didn’t have the intensity and quirk of the first book nor did it have the same humour and surprises of the second, and I found myself sorely disappointed (and infuriated) in what could have really been a great read.

There was nothing redeemable I found of Dante, for starters. Privileged, unapologetically superficial and self-absorbed as he goes in search of thrills beyond working in MI6, his own selfishness and cowardice leads him to eventually become a Gravedigger, all because he’d no care for anyone but himself, not even the woman he gives up because he was afraid of giving up his lifestyle more. But he merely remains insufferably unrepentant even throughout the 2 years he left Liv—despite the claims he makes about wanting only her—and somehow thinks that a declaration of love at the end without any tangible measure of self-sacrifice would solve all problems between them in his small-minded universe.

Liv, the woman he spurned for the sake of his own skin, is understandably angry but apparently not angry enough that she jumps easily into bed with him despite the enormous amount of hurt he’d caused. Lust, or rather, sex, it seems, is overpowering to the point where Dante and Liv get it on as though 2 years of pain can be brushed aside like nothing. I still liked her better nonetheless—liked her unrelenting determination to search for a sister (whose story feels like a ship passing in the night) and sympathised even the pain she’d gone through.

Still, ‘Say No More’ isn’t a book I’d warmed up to at all, considering the optimism I felt after Elias/Miller’s story. But it’s been long established that my reviews mostly run contrary to what’s found here, so maybe it’ll be right up someone else’s alley. Just not mine.